Is it Cold Calling or Warm Calling?

I’m one of those people who reads the comments at the end of the articles. In this article, one person commented “The only way a cold call will work is if you have something they want or need.”

I’ve never worked with a company with enough $$ laying around to spend it on sales & advertising practices that aren’t at least somewhat targeted. I would guess, in some perverse way, even those annoying junk calls I get on my home phone, office phone and now even my cellphone are probably targeted in some way. So if they are targeted, are they really cold calls? How do you make them warm-er calls?

Here’s an example: your company sells lawn care services, and your main focus is residential. Your company is in North Dakota.

You know your season – maybe March, probably April, but definitely May through at least September. In a good year you may have business into October and even November.

You know your market – residential homes with lawns. You may stretch it to residential management companies with single family homes in their inventory.

So you attend the home show, send out your mailers to your past customers and their neighbors, keep your website updated and offer many ways for people to interact with you through click-throughs and forms; maybe you offer an email newsletter for past clients and anyone who subscribes on your website. If you have the budget you use Any Door Direct Mailers to hit all of the homes on select postal routes. If you’re really on your toes you have some automated marketing functionality built in to send out messaging on a schedule or in response to website interaction. Finally, if the business isn’t rolling in by now, perhaps you engage a telemarketer or make some calls yourself. Is that a cold call, or have you taken the steps to make it a warm-er call?

If you have determined the market for your product or service and properly advertised to that market, you are no longer making cold calls. In many cases the contacts in a market you have defined, targeted with your message, and provided interaction opportunities are waiting for your call. As we have discussed in the past, your biggest competitor may be apathy. If you wait for your prospect to call you while your competitor is calling them, who will get their business?

Is your company looking for help setting up some of these processes? We would love to help you be successful! Contact us at info@bookwormstcloud.com or 320-281.0656.